Who Killed Sagrario?
by
Hector Carreon
La Voz de Aztlan
April 19, 1999One year ago Maria Sagrario Gonzalez Flores, a 17 year old worker, was raped, tortured and murdered on her way home from a Ciudad Juarez maquiladora. She was last seen boarding a maquiladora bus for her long trip home in Lomas de Poleo on the outskirts of the border city. She never arrived home. Her battered body was found on April 30, 1998 at Loma Blanca not far from the young woman's modest home where she lived with her family.
What makes this extraordinary is that Sagrario was only one of scores of other young women maquiladora workers who had met the same fate. On the day of Sagrario's cruel murder, there had already been over 100 young women who had been raped and murdered and bodies dumped in various locations around the city. The most pressing question at the time was, "Who was killing the young women workers of Juarez?"
In 1993, a company from Midlands, Texas sent one of their engineers to Ciudad Juarez to help start a maquiladora. The man, who had multiple rape charges in Florida and Texas and who had already served 6 years of a 12 year sentence in a prison was an Egyptian national by the name of Sharif Abdul Latif Sharif. A women police agent in Florida categorize Sharif as a vicious and brutal sexual predator. Soon after the arrival of Sharif, young Mexican girls were turning up dead and bodies dumped in certain specific areas of Juarez.
Prompted by and outraged public and after months of investigation, the Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua State police authorities finally broke the case and arrested Sharif for the murders on October 3, 1995. The police were sure they had the right man and the court sentenced the maquiladora engineer to 30 years in prison. Soon after, however, more bodies of young women workers were turning up raped and murdered under similar circumstances as the serial murders attributed to Sharif.
How could this be? The answer stumped the authorities and the public as well. It turned out that Sharif, an intelligent chemical engineer with registered U.S. Patents, was paying and ordering a local youth gang to continue committing rapes and murders in order to throw off the prosecution fighting his appeal in a Chihuahua state court. He was masterminding the continuation of the rapes and murders of young Juarez women from behind the walls of CERESO, the local Juarez prison. This part of the case was solved when the authorities arrested "Los Rebeldes" on April 14, 1996 and they confessed to their complicity with Sharif .
The Ciudad Juarez public were very much relieved with the arrest of the "Los Rebeldes" and their confessions but this relief was short spanned when even more battered bodies were turning up dumped in pretty much the same locations and under similar situations as those attributed to Sharif and Los Rebeldes. This had a devastating effect on the psyche of not only the citizens of Juarez but also on the international community. This period produced a multitude of theories by criminologists, the media, the FBI, and the general public as to who or what was behind the heinous murders of so many young Juarez women. The Mexican as well as the U.S. national media reported extensively on the "mystery" of the Juarez women murders. No one knew exactly what was going on or how to explain the continuing murders.
The big break came last month when a 14 year old maquiladora worker was sexually assaulted and left for dead in an empty lot by a maquiladora bus driver nicknamed "El Dracula. The child worker had been assigned to the "graveyard shift" by a maquiladora that is a subsidiary of A.O. Smith Company of Wisconsin, U.S.A. She was the last rider on the maquiladora bus at 1:00 in the morning when the bus driver took a different route, attacked the child and left her for dead in an empty lot in an area where others bodies of murdered women have been found.
Nancy, the young worker, was able to give information that led to the arrest of the bus driver and he was arrested a few days later. "El Dracula's" confession shocked everyone when he implicated 4 other bus drivers and Sharif, the maquiladora engineer, in a diabolical conspiracy that involved murder for hire. The confessions of "Los Choferes" give details to the fact that Sharif paid $1200 per murder and that he wanted at least two murders per month. As proof of the murders, Sharif demanded from the bus drivers that they turn over to him the "undergarments" of the murdered women.
Apparently, Sharif with a large income from his patents and other sources, had many privileges in the Juarez prison including the full use of a cellular phone that he would use to keep in touch with the bus drivers. The mayor of Ciudad Juarez has since "fired' the prison warden and Sharif has been moved to the Chihuahua State Penitentiary.
Who killed Sagrario? Who is to blame for the murder of this beautiful and hard working young woman? Was it one person? Was it circumstances beyond anyone's control? Was it Sharif? Is the maquiladora industry in Ciudad Juarez who hires women as young as 13 years old, as was one murdered young worker, to blame?
Many of the victims were murdered soon after being hired by the maquiladoras. Many were recruited from the interior of Mexico, from small towns and villages where trust and innocence is the order of the day. Many of the women were paid a few dollars in daily wages and could not afford any transportation other than the buses provided by the maquiladoras. So who killed Sagrario?
Was the company from Midlands, Texas who first brought the vicious sexual predator Sharif to Juarez to blame. Do companies have different standards as to who they hire in Juarez as opposed to who they hire in the United States? Or are maquiladoras like Motores Electricos (A.O. Smith) who hired "El Dracula" to blame? After all, is this not the reason why the maquiladoras located to Juarez in the first place? Are we, the consumers of the products that are produced by the maquiladoras under these circumstances to blame?
Who really killed Sagrario? Maybe...just maybe we all killed Sagrario! Everyone of us who hold shares as investors in the Juarez maquiladoras and turn our faces away from the conditions being created in Juarez in the name of the almighty dollar! Maybe we all killed Sagrario through our materialistic quest for more and cheaper consumer goods. Just maybe we all have a bloody hand in the death of Sagrario! May God forgive us all.
